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  Currency wars lead to real ones, so China must be handled carefully Mehreen Khan Bretton Woods in 1945 was designed to prevent a repeat of the 1930s chaos Next image › ‘‘ In the past two years, the world economy has been gripped by trade wars and real wars. History suggests that the precursor for both is often a phase of rampant currency wars, which are back in the news. Currency wars — or manipulation of exchange rates to gain advantage over trading partners — are often a harbinger for trade wars that can morph into real wars. Currency wars are so dangerous to global financial stability that the entire basis of our postwar Bretton Woods system was designed to stop countries from engaging in the beggar-thy-neighbour devaluations of the 1930s. The chaotic collapse of the inter-war gold standard and the breakdown of international monetary co-operation contributed to the world’s second global conflict in two decades. The ability to manage currency disputes is a good test of global c...
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  Trump’s Unpredictability Has Costs, Too My grandfather was an i r r i t a t i n g bridge player. Avoiding dramatic and attention- grabbing high-risk bids, he worked on what he called the creep system, inching toward his goals by winning one boring low-bid hand after another. Lately, America’s adversaries seem to be taking a leaf out of his book. Even as they step up their campaign against American power, the revisionist axis of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea seeks to avoid triggering moments like the Pearl Harbor attack, which roused the American people to the heroic efforts and sacrifices that won World War II. The strategy has brought them some successes. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are cooperating with one another more effectively than ever. Even as war materiel and North Korean soldiers flow across Eurasia to support Russia’s war on Ukraine, information and technological breakthroughs flow back, preparing Chinese and North Korean military leaders for the new age ...
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  How AI Wound Up Driving Economy and Stock Market BY JUSTIN LAHART The U.S. economy keeps putting more eggs in the artificial- intelligence basket. Tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to meet AI computing needs and issuing billions of dollars of debt to help make those purchases. The rapid data-center buildout is powering construction spending, hiring and municipal revenues. Meanwhile, a stockmarket rally fueled by the rise in shares of chip makers and other companies benefiting from the AI boom has led to a massive increase in household wealth. That is helping to bolster consumer spending. Combined, those factors are likely responsible for roughly one-third of the nation’s recent economic growth, according to Michael Pearce, an economist at Oxford Economics. But the strength that the economy is drawing from the AI boom is also a vulnerability: What would happen if the boom fizzled out? “It is very much an AIdriven economy right now,” said Barclays econom...
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  Bessent’s Yen Rescue to Boost US Pressure on Japan Trade, Rates Scott BessentPhotographer: Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg August 4, 2026 at 11:32 AM GMT+10 Updated on August 4, 2026 at 3:43 PM GMT+10 Save Translate Takeaways by Bloomberg AI Sign up for the Next Japan newsletter, for an inside view of the forces reshaping Japan, and what’s next for its businesses, markets and consumers. The first US-Japan coordinated purchases of yen in decades was “a signal of friendship,” according to President Donald Trump. “The Trump administration delivers for America’s trusted partners,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
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  Korea’s Leverage Trap Has an Echo in India July 31, 2026 at 5:00 AM GMT+10 Retail investors have a leverage problem. Photographer: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images Save South Korean stocks are the world’s No. 1 cautionary tale about the perils of too much leverage, built up too quickly. There is, however, another market in Asia where brokers are lending large sums of money to their clients, piling up systemic risk. India has had none of Korea’s AI infrastructure-related exuberance. Its benchmark index has been among the world’s worst performing this year. Yet retail investors are racking up debt to buy at stretched valuations. Fully digital stock purchases have made it simple — perhaps a bit too simple — for investors to access credit and for brokers to push it. Besides, with inflation expectations for the near future at above 9%, it makes little sense for savers to leave money in a deposit account earning 6%.
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  Why is bank enforcement declining? | Brookings Enforcement of rules by bank regulators has declined, as measured by formal enforcement actions. The decline in enforcement has occurred across administrations, in contrast to the narrative of a pendulum of enforcement that swings between Democratic and Republican administrations. Instead, the data show a stepwise decline in enforcement in which subsequent administrations either maintain lower enforcement rates or continue to decrease enforcement. Enforcement decline varies substantially by regulator: the sharpest decline is at the Federal Reserve (Fed), where formal enforcement actions have fallen by nearly 50 percent since Covid. This post explores the data on bank enforcement, notes the discrepancy between agencies, which transcends Democratic and Republican leadership, and points to a serious decrease in formal enforcement actions, particularly at the Federal Reserve. It starts by describing the differences between regulation and...
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  Meloni versucht, Sánchez in der EU zu isolieren Streit um Migration : Die italienische Mitte-rechts-Koalition attackiert die spanische Regierung nach der Migrationskrise von Ceuta hart. Und erhält dabei Unterstützung. Die Aurora war das erste Fährschiff, das im Hafen von Genua einlief, nachdem die italienische Regierung „gezielte Grenzkontrollen“ im Verkehr mit Spanien eingeführt hatte. Das Schiff der Reederei GNV kam aus Barcelona. Bei der Abfertigung der Passagiere am Samstag habe es keine Verzögerungen gegeben, berichteten italienische Medien. Die Aurora und ein weiteres Fährschiff von GNV verkehren fahrplanmäßig zwischen Tanger in Marokko und Genua, Barcelona ist jeweils Zwischenstopp. Die italienischen Hafen- und Grenzbehörden kontrollieren die ankommenden Passagiere, Fahrzeuge und Güter der beiden Schiffe immer. Denn sie kommen von außerhalb des Schengenraums, auch wenn es auf seiner Route bereits einen Hafen im Schengenstaat Spanien angelaufen hat. F.A.Z.-Artikel häufiger ...
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